Johnson announces bus fares to rise by 12.7%

Bus passengers in London will an extra 20p per journey from January next year under fare increases set out by Mayor of London Boris Johnson this morning.

Johnson’s second fares package will see the single bus journey Oyster pay as you go fare increase from £1 to £1.20 while on the Tube, the Zone 1 Oyster pay as you go fare increases from £1.60 to £1.80. TfL say “most” Oyster pay as you go Tube fares will also increase by 20p.

Overall bus fares will go up by 12.7% and Tube fares by 3.9% although the “vast majority” of Travelcards will be frozen.

Last year the Mayor unveiled a 6% increase, today’s announcement means he will have presided over an increase of 30p in the single bus journey Oyster pay as you go fare since taking office.

Announcing the increases Johnson told journalists they were caused by the “mistakes” of his predecessor, the recession derived fall in Tube passenger numbers and the cost of bailing out Metronet.

Johnson said the increases were “not a decision that I have taken lightly” and insisted he’d “been persuaded of the need for fare rises only after ensuring that every efficiency possible, at least £5 billion in total, is being made at TfL.”

The Mayor has also announced changes to the Congestion Charge, including automated billing, which he says will make the scheme “fairer and easier”.

Drivers who open a ‘CC Auto Pay’ account will pay £9 day, up from the current £8. Those who do not open an account will pay £10 per day.

The Mayor, who re-committed himself to the scrapping of the e Western Extension subject to formal consultation, said the increase “will ensure that the system remains effective in controlling traffic levels in central London, and the revenue will also help us fund the vital improvements to London’s transport network that all Londoners want to see.”

Disputing Johnson’s claims on the reasons for fare increases, former Mayor Ken Livingstone said he’d left “very large Transport for London reserves” which had been depleted by Johnson’s policies which had “cut investment, reduced protection of the environment and hammered ordinary Londoners with above inflation fare increases.”

There’s been criticism of the increases from passenger watchdog London TravelWatch, Chair Sharon Grant said the increases “will be unacceptable to ordinary Londoners”.

Although Grant welcomed the freeze on Travelcard prices she warned “infrequent, irregular users such as part-time workers will be disproportionately punished” by the increases.

Livingstone has called on his successor to “tell Londoners the truth, not lies. He is making them pay massively higher fares to protect a tiny number of well off polluters at a time when London has some of the worst air quality in Europe.”

Labour’s deputy leader on the London Assembly, John Biggs, said has branded the increased fares “a massive kick in the teeth for hard pressed Londoners” and predicted Londoners would “rightly wonder why Boris can apparently find £5bn of TfL savings but can’t keep down their fares.”

“Boris Johnson boasts about freezing his share of the council tax bill, but his continual hiking up of fares means he is taking significantly more from the wallets and purses of hard up Londoners.”

Green Party AM Jenny Jones said the Mayor was ” favouring motorists by going ahead with plans to cancel the western extension of the congestion charge” while “pricing people off public transport”.

Jones added: “Part of his fares increase will pay for the gap left by losing around £55m of congestion charge income. The Mayor has today highlighted the pollution caused by old buses, but he was the one who dropped the £25 congestion charge on gas guzzling cars, which would have generated around £30m in its first year”.

Comments

If ever there was a lesson for other cities considering congestion charging, it is the unfortunate doubling of the tax in less than five years – at a time when prices in the private sector are actually falling. Manchester campaigners used the 60% increase to demonstrate that once such a thing is in place, all you will get is price hikes and gouging by a monopoly provider. Now other cities like Cambridge will also recoil in horror. Indeed the price rise in London had an impact as far away as New York. Now you have Mayor whose campaigning to get elected 18 months ago featured attacks on the Congestion Charge…and he is enforcing a 25% price rise…and using the recession as one of the reasons! Truly extraordinary

You’re slightly missing the point there, Damian – he could raise *the same amount* by retaining the same area and *reducing* the charge. All he’s done here is slightly offset a chunk of the money sacrificed by giving in to the motoring lobby and his supporters in well-off areas of London.

Londoner’s must now be starting to realise what Boris Johnson’s Mayoralty means in the long term . I should imagine they now wished , that they had of understood Boris Johnson before they caste their votes. Im sure that there are more shocks to come !

I’ve been upset about the disproportionate increase of transport fares in this great town for too long.
The only remedy I can think of is cycling which prevents you from getting too disgruntled about this constant aggravation of professional rip-off. Can someone please explain why you pay 11€ for 10 metro tickets in Paris and out of memory about 8.50€ for 10 tickets in Barcelona whereas it’s about 23.75€ for 10 tickets with an Oyster card in London.
Of course London is much bigger but does that really make a difference of how to run a business.

…but Tom, there are so many differences in opinion as to whether indeed the C-Charge raises any serious cash over and above spending that the Mayor would probably have to increase it by 25% even if it stretched right way to the M25! It’s not so much libertarianism as simply the point that those in charge of the C-Charge in London have doubled the price over a five year period at a time when those in private business have reduced their prices. So the impression given to the people of Cambridge – whose politicians are mulling a C-Charge – is surely not a happy one for road pricing campaigners. And the real point is that these surcharges and monopoly gougings had a major impact on Manchester and New York already. Promises by one Mayor not to increase the charge…impressions given by another that he was opposed to it…none of it has stopped them indulging in price gouging. Governments now can’t even give a C-Charge away to cities with a (false and dodgy) politicians’ promise of ‘more investment’ in transport. We all know what government stats about ‘more investment’ are – already planned spending dressed up as something new! And much thanks for this must go to London. And as a free marketer I do believe in road users paying for road use…but not in an arbitrary and chaotic way that allows the charging to be seen as a money pot for hard-up politicians, however much damage it might do to business and locals.

You only have to go and see the pittiful state of Petticoat Lane market during the week to appreciate the effect that the C-Charge has on small and marginal businesses. Petticoat Lane is just inside the Zone and traders at the market have to pay the Charge every day they trade during the week which is one of the reasons there are so few of them left.

It also affects people making very early deliveries to stores and businesses inside the Zone, particularly those who sell fresh produce like fish, fruit and vegetables, and flowers. Those deliveries have to be made by a vehicle, very early, and if it is still inside the Zone at 7.00am when the Charge starts, then the Charge has to be paid.

Couriers making deliveries inside the Zone will also be affected. They have little choice but to pass on the extra cost to their customers. The same with any other business that has to pay the increased Charge. Either ‘go under’, as in Petticoat Lane, or pass on the increase, so the rest of us, as customers, pay a bit more for what we buy.

Doesn’t this just illustrate the difference between Business and Government, even a Tory one. Business does everything it can to reduce prices during a recession. Government just puts prices up, be it the C-Charge, Bus fares, or Tube fares.

To be fair a lot of this ‘business tragedy’ could have been avoided if the businesses had been pro-active about resolving the issues prior to the charge being brought in.

When you take a trip to Amsterdam you will see how much can be carried on a bike (with a trailer) and how deliveries can be made outside of peak hours. They don’t need a congestion charge because the mindset is not like the one we have here – so there is no congestion problem to start with.

The market stall holders on Petticoat lane and other businesses didn’t want to change voluntarilly (presumably because there was a cost) – but are quite happy to moan they’re being put out of business due to the congestion charge.

Maybe there is a lesson for us all.

None of this detracts from the likelyhood that the increase in C-Charge is more to to with Boris’s mis-handling of the budgets rather than the actual need for an increase. Maybe the solution would have been to exempt cases like the market stall holders and simply charge more to the uber-rich now being chaffuer driven to work each morning on lovely clear roads. Still – this would not provide the incentive for the market stall holders to change their ways.

I suppose you’re confident you could talk them round – but sometimes diplomacy is exhausted and other measures need to be taken.

I would also question where the logic in these rises are – surely if the Tory argument against raising top level taxation at a national level (because it doesn’t actually produce more tax revenue overall) – also applies to reducing the zone and charging those remaining inside more.

If the goal is a reduction in traffic then this is a good move, but it’s clearly about raising money or the charge would be £100 per day to act as a real dis-incentive – or even voucher based.

The rise on bus fares is a clear attack on the poorest commuters and those not on the tube network.

Once again the adage is proven “Old Tories never die, they simply change their jobs” as Boris has demonstrated beautifully.

When are the people in this pathetic country going to stand up and fight again’st this disgusting regime? Boris johnson like his predesseor is just another puppet with no vision whatsoever. The few are controlling the many here and johnson is a classic tory doink. People stand up for gods sake and rebel again’st this fascism.